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Un-Retiring: How Older Workers Could Solve Rural America‘s Labor Crisis
Ed Chandler, 73, worked most of his life in a West Virginia factory. It didn‘t take long for him to get bored when he retired. “You can only cut so much grass and piddle around in the garden so much,” he said. So he did what a growing number of older Americans are doing. He un-retired.
Rural states like West Virginia need workers. They have thousands of jobs they can‘t fill. Yet they‘ve often overlooked one resource they tend to have in abundance. With the right opportunities and working conditions, older people like Chandler could fill a lot of those jobs―and provide a much-needed boost to rural economies.
“People in my age bracket still have contributions to make,” Chandler said. “They might not be in the strenuous occupations we had prior, but they‘re still positive contributions we can make to the world in which we live.” A former pipefitter, he now delivers flowers in his hometown of Charleston, W.Va. Younger workers, he added, “can learn a lot from the work ethic of the older generation.”
The story is the same from North Dakota to Oklahoma to Vermont. “We can‘t find help anywhere,” one rural employer said in a recent news story. “We have so many vacancies,” said another. Getting more people into the workforce has become “the challenge of our time,” West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey declared earlier this year. At last count, his state had around 3,000 more unfilled jobs than it had people looking for work.
Morrisey and other leaders are working against time. Nearly 20 percent of rural Americans are old enough to retire. And when they do, there‘s often nobody coming in to fill their place. The civilian labor force has been growing for years in cities and suburbs. It‘s been falling in rural areas.
Rural states like West Virginia need workers. They have thousands of jobs they can‘t fill. Yet they‘ve often overlooked one resource they tend to have in abundance. With the right opportunities and working conditions, older people like Chandler could fill a lot of those jobs―and provide a much-needed boost to rural economies.
“People in my age bracket still have contributions to make,” Chandler said. “They might not be in the strenuous occupations we had prior, but they‘re still positive contributions we can make to the world in which we live.” A former pipefitter, he now delivers flowers in his hometown of Charleston, W.Va. Younger workers, he added, “can learn a lot from the work ethic of the older generation.”
The story is the same from North Dakota to Oklahoma to Vermont. “We can‘t find help anywhere,” one rural employer said in a recent news story. “We have so many vacancies,” said another. Getting more people into the workforce has become “the challenge of our time,” West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey declared earlier this year. At last count, his state had around 3,000 more unfilled jobs than it had people looking for work.
Morrisey and other leaders are working against time. Nearly 20 percent of rural Americans are old enough to retire. And when they do, there‘s often nobody coming in to fill their place. The civilian labor force has been growing for years in cities and suburbs. It‘s been falling in rural areas.
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